Whether you have been clinically diagnosed with depression, or you simply feel unhappy with yourself or your situation in life, there is a way to overcome your perpetual feelings of discontent. I have dealt with some of these feelings myself, and I put a lot of time into building a method for helping people get rid of their anxiety, stress, and mental anguish. I call it The Seven Keys to Living Happy, Healthy, and Whole.

If you follow the seven keys, you can:

Increase your happiness

Learn how to get rid of negative emotions

Improve your diet

Build a regular exercise program that fits your needs and your personality

My book How to Live Until You Die outlines each of the seven keys and goes into detail on how to take the proper steps to implement each key into your own life. While each of the keys contributes to overall health and happiness, they also individually promote significant improvement in specific areas. For example: Having the right diet will help greatly in maintaining a healthy weight, but did you know that it can actually boost mental health as well?

Research has proven there is a direct correlation between depression and an unhealthy diet. Do you eat a lot of sweets and other processed foods? That can cause unhappiness. While it may seem like fast food is your only option in the middle of a busy day, it can be a major instigator to feelings of depression, poor eating habits, and obesity. There are plenty of healthier options that take less time to prepare than you think.

Raw fruits and vegetables are a great snack because not only do they require little to no preparation, they are a natural source of vitality. Instead of consuming empty calories which can also act as depressants, consider snacking on raw fruits and vegetables. Some fruits and vegetables even have properties known to boost energy, fight disease, and put you in a good mood. Other foods to consider in your depression-defeating diet are scallops and salmon, which both have been found to improve mood and reduce depression.

In addition to a good diet, having a regular exercise routine will do wonders for your mental health. If you don’t already exercise regularly, finding a good routine can be hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Three tips that I like to give my clients and friends are:

Start with walking

Find something you love

Do more than you did yesterday

Walking is very therapeutic and can help to relieve stress. Finding an exercise that you love can give you great peace and add to the defining characteristics that make you who you are. You can also expand your social interactions by joining a group centered on a certain activity that you enjoy (runners, bikers, swimmers, etc.). One of the best ways to get started with any exercise is to set a goal of doing more than you did yesterday. No one is going to get off the couch after months of not exercising and complete one of the rigorous home-video workouts from the “As Seen on TV” workout plans. Keep it simple. Pick a fun activity that provides exercise, and start slow. Once you’re comfortable with a certain volume, add in personal challenges to push yourself and make it even more fun.

When it is possible, try to get 30 minutes of sunlight each day. Doing so will increase your Vitamin D levels and you will benefit from the fresh air and the feeling of the sun itself. Low Vitamin D can cause memory deficiency, general health risks, and is also linked to depression.

Another thing that can help you overcome heartache, depression, and emotional pain is to acknowledge your spiritual side. I personally read the Bible and spend time in regular prayer and meditation. Knowing that God is in control, that He loves you, and that He wants to spend time with you can lighten any burden and bring peace and gratitude to your life in unparalleled ways.

For more advice on how to overcome depression naturally, get your copy of How to Live Until You Die today. Each of these topics and more are covered in detail, and each of the seven keys has concrete steps laid out so that you can build your own successful blueprint to living happy, healthy, and whole. Also, please check out my website for free resources to help you live, really live.

No matter what occupation you have, there are daily stresses with which you deal. The only difference is that some of us are better at dealing with stress than others. Letting stress get to you can be one of the biggest obstacles to truly enjoying your life. Another big obstacle is feeling like you don’t have enough time for enjoyable things.

Being a hard worker is both an admirable and necessary trait for reaching new levels in business. But in order to live life to its fullest, we need to find a healthy balance. As an entrepreneur, I am constantly striving for success. As a result of that, there were times when I worked around the clock without so much as a thought about exercise or sleep. Those were not good times.

Although it may seem counterintuitive, rest and relaxation actually enable us to be more productive during the hours that we work. Working around the clock doesn’t increase your efficiency. Proper sleep enhances your memory and improves your cognitive processes. Although it may seem like we don’t have time for sleep, proper rest is essential to a productive day. To get proper sleep, we must respect our circadian rhythms.

In my book How to Live Until You Die I explain that we all sleep in 90-minute cycles that repeat themselves throughout the night, alternating between REM, (rapid-eye-movement) and NREM (non-rapid-eye-movement) sleep. I give further details on REM and NREM sleep and how to get the best sleep for waking up energized and being productive, using sources from the Mayo Clinic, National Sleep Foundation, and Harvard Business Review to corroborate my advice.

If you aren’t getting proper sleep, you are going to be more susceptible to illness, and you are going to be weary all the time. Pretty soon, you’ll literally become sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s certainly not living life to its fullest. To truly enjoy your life, you need to get regular rest and not feel guilty about sleeping.

In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport talks about the necessary balance between work and other activities, like exercise. He encourages people to take a break during the day to go for a walk or run in order to re-energize and balance exercise and work. He especially encourages people to spend time outdoors, saying “Spending time in nature can improve your ability to concentrate.” Newport elaborates on how spending time walking through nature can help you focus on solving problems. I myself have often walked my problems out and it has greatly helped to ease the daily stresses of being an entrepreneur.

The thing that matters most in living your life to the fullest is balance. There is nothing wrong with hard work, but you can’t allow your work to take the place of spending time with your family, sleeping, or exercising. There is a balance you can achieve which allows you to enjoy activities that you love and still accomplish the things you need to do to make money.

Can Negative Emotions Affect Your Health?

When you think about your physical health, what are the first two things that come to your mind? Most people would probably say diet and exercise. In fact, if you’ve read some of my earlier blogs, you know that I agree that both a good diet and regular exercise are keys to living happy, healthy, and whole. However, there’s another important element to your health of which you might not be thinking. Can negative emotions affect your health?

Living in a constant state of stress will cause a drastic negative effect on your health.

As Bessie Stanley, author of the poem success, said “He who has achieved success has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” You may be more familiar with the shorter version of this quote: “Live, laugh, love.” When you laugh and love, your health will benefit. To really live, you need to take care of your soul.

If your heart or your soul is full of pain and stress, you can never be whole. It doesn’t matter how strong or how healthy your body is when your soul is hurting, because being fit and eating healthy can’t make you truly happy.

I devote a whole chapter to the soul in my book How to Live Until You Die, explaining why your soul is one of the seven keys to living happy, healthy, and whole and giving examples of how to properly care for your soul.

Although many people may overlook the importance of their soul on their overall health, it is critical that you pay attention to the things your soul needs. If you don’t know how it feels to have peace of mind and emotional peace, I encourage you to put a focus on learning how to communicate with your soul and how to measure its current state of health.

The soul can communicate with you in two ways: First, our minds can show us what negative emotions and thoughts we’re holding. If the soul has been hurt, the mind can tell us how. Sometimes, the only way to release that pain is to forgive. If we can truly forgive someone who wronged us, we can allow the feeling of pain or betrayal we experienced to melt away.

The heart is where we store the pain and the joy of our souls. When our souls are suffering, our hearts feel heavy. When our souls are lightened, we can have peace in our hearts. You can’t be truly happy, healthy, or whole if you’re living your life with a heavy heart and carrying around negative issues from the past with feelings of sadness, regret, or despair.

You can cleanse your soul if you listen to your heart. Sometimes, forgiveness is the key to healing the pain in your heart and the sadness in your soul. Both Johns Hopkins medicine and the Mayo Clinic have written articles about the scientific evidence behind the correlation of genuine forgiveness to increased health and happiness.

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If you want to eliminate harmful stress and discover emotional peace, peace of mind, and a life free of negative energy, you need to cleanse your soul. For more insight on the importance of having a healthy soul, and how to take the next steps to living a life that is truly happy, healthy, and whole, get your copy of How to Live Until You Die today.

This weekend is a special weekend for our mothers! It’s time to celebrate Mother’s Day and show love to the special moms in our lives this weekend.

When I was a little boy, I used to love to go outside and play in the woods. I loved roaming around in the woods near our house. One day I found a rose bush growing out in the woods. I dug up this rose bush, took it home and gave it to my mom for Mother’s Day. She planted it outside of our house. She always talked about that rose bush and how much she loved those roses.

For Mother’s Day, plant some kind of flowers in your mom’s yard for her. If she can have something in her yard that she can see year after year, it will be a lasting memory. I’m glad that I did for my mom years ago. My mom is a special lady. She sacrificed a lot for me when I was growing up and still does. She is a giving person, and I am very appreciative of that.

I know there are some people that may not be so happy on Mother’s Day. Maybe they didn’t have a great experience growing up. Maybe their mom wasn’t what she should have been to them. I know that happens and there a lot of situations like that. I have a couple of people that are very dear to me that were abandoned by their mothers. Maybe you can relate. If you didn’t have a great experience with your mom, then there is something that I want you to consider today . . . forgiveness.

I wrote about this in my new book, How to Live Until You Die, The 7 Keys to Living Happy, Healthy & Whole. I’ve got a chapter in there on the health of our souls. It is extremely important that we keep our soul healthy. There are a lot of people right now that are physically sick because they have a wounded soul. They are holding unforgiveness in their hearts. If your mom was not the best mom to you, the best thing you can do is to forgive her. You may think she doesn’t deserve it, but guess what? You do! Forgive your mom. Move on and enjoy your life more. Love people more. This is something that you have got to do. I encourage you to forgive. I know someone who did that and it changed her life. If you haven’t checked out my book, check it out and read that particular chapter on the soul. You can purchase it here on amazon.

Go show some love to your mothers and grandmothers this weekend. Give them a big hug and a big kiss. Buy them a rose bush and plant it in their yard and enjoy this awesome Mother’s Day weekend. I want to give a special thanks to all of you mothers for being such wonderful ladies, and I appreciate all that you do to show love to your kids, your husbands and your communities.